


Platonic Debate and Sapphic Readings

by artemismoon12



Category: CPCoulter's Dalton
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Classics, Dark Academia, F/F, Public Sex, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:33:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28544898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artemismoon12/pseuds/artemismoon12
Summary: A couple of university lesbians argue over Plato.
Relationships: John Logan Wright III/Micah Randall
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	Platonic Debate and Sapphic Readings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [senator_princess_general](https://archiveofourown.org/users/senator_princess_general/gifts).



The library was quiet, as most are wont to do.

Towering dark wood shelves, lined with first editions most collections clawed each other by the throat for. Minimal sunlight shone through the curtained window. High noon was a distant concept for a space where twilight was a constant. A sleepy, dusty space with only the creak of chairs and shush of shoes over ancient carpet.

Micah Randall, full time Literature student and part time sweater aficionado, was seated at the edge of a vintage sofa facing the gas fireplace installed for the winter months in the library. Her bobbed hair curled around her ears in dark brown rings, framing her face along with gold rimmed glasses. In her hands she held a volume of _Plato: The Collected Works_ which was a spot of colour against her cream button up, grey cable-knit cardigan, and suspenders. The poster child of off-brand hipster, she traced her finger down the lines of epic poetry, trying to explain to her study partner why exactly her understanding of the text.

“ _He will suddenly catch sight of something amazingly beautiful in its nature; this, Socrates, is the ultimate objective of all the previous efforts,”_ Micah read aloud, “ _All previous efforts_ is important there, implying that one can try to achieve the peak of beauty. It’s an objectification of anything beautiful, in that anyone who ever achieves beauty is doomed to never achieve the heights they could in their purest form.” 

“That’s wrong.”

Joanna Logan Wright (preferably, “Lo” to all who knew her) snatched the book from Micah’s lap, running her own finely trimmed nails down the page to the next line. Her twill jacket and skirt combo strained from the effort, more fashionable than functional for curling up on a sofa secluded from the rest of the library.

“Its right in the next line. _This beauty always is, and doesn’t come into being or cease; it doesn’t increase or diminish.”_ Lo jabbed at the page, “It’s contextualizing the virtue of beauty. Beauty in the time of the Greeks wasn’t a trait, it was a virtue- you were either blessed or you weren’t. It was like intelligence under the Platonic school of thought, its not about achieving more knowledge, but discovering the knowledge you already had within you.”

“That’s not what the writing implies.” Micah said calmly. “Beauty can be a virtue, but you can always express that in different ways. If one person was more intelligent than another, the lesser could still prove they were superior with a more logical argument.”

Lo groaned, snapping the book closed and tossing it onto the coffee table. “You don’t understand the context! You’re reading this like it’s a novel, when you should be reading it like a philosophical treatise- which it is.”

The decisive tone of her sentence caught when Micah leant back with a shrug, her suspenders shifting against her full chest, “Well, you would know better than me, Madame Classics II.”

“Yeah, Classics II, because I’m in _Classics Second Year.”_ Lo said firmly, “I know my Plato.”

“I never said you didn’t.” Micah said, resting her shoe up on the sofa, other foot in the pile of books they had collected around them.

Lo opened her mouth to argue until she realized Micah wasn’t arguing back. She deflated, huffing and leaning back. “You’re also wrong about Sappho.”

“Oh? So my understanding of her also doesn’t align with Plato’s? That she isn’t _the Tenth Muse?”_ Micah asked, ghost of a smile on her lips, leaning back against the well-worn plush.

Lo frowned, “No. But you said her poem was lyrics when it’s clearly ecclesiastical.”

“And what do you think lyric poetry is used for?” Micah brushed her thumb along her lower lip, seemingly considering.

“She’s invoking the gods! _Hymn to Aphrodite_ is literally in line with her role as priestess!” Lo said, bending down to the floor to grab at the anthology, feathered like a peacock with tabs. “It’s… here. You’d probably read this as some kind of love, but for Sappho in her time, she’d be writing this as a literal cure for madness because _eros_ was mania for the Greeks. It’s why the translation reads, ‘ _So what in my mad heart was my greatest desire… who was the fair one that must be persuaded, who wronged thee Sappho’._ She is praying to Aphrodite to rid her of a curse! It’s not proper to read a modern lesbian context onto it because that simply wouldn’t have been the way Sappho would have been writing it.”

“But if the Greeks were essentialist in their thinking like you said, then wouldn’t this desire have been in her all along? There is no increase or decrease in desire because it’s an attraction that can’t be controlled? It simply is?” Micah placed a hand on her knee, tilting her head at Lo.

The way Micah was so calm about this bothered Lo, she glared, snapping the book closed even harder this time, pressing it to Micah’s chest. “I am right.”

“I’m sure you are.” Micah smiled, reaching up to meet Lo’s hands and ease the book down between them. “I just think that verse has an alternative meaning. ‘ _the fair one that must be persuaded’_ is something I’m really thinking about.”

Lo looked between them, snatching her hands away from the book with a flush. “You’re not going to change my mind.”

“You’re cute, but you talk too much.” Micah quirked the corner of her mouth, leaning forward into Lo’s space, brushing the shorter girl’s blonde hair over her shoulder, cupping her hand under her jaw. 

Even with Micah’s mouth against hers, Lo tried to argue, but Micah shushed her and just sucked on her lower lip. Lo didn’t notice before she was on her back, Micah covering her with all her extra height, taking up space Lo didn’t even know she had to give.

“Micah, I-“ Lo squeaked before Micah nipped at her neck, pressing them down under the edge of the back of the sofa.

“Keep it down babe,” Micah smiled down at her, her hands hot against Lo’s body. “We’re in a library.”

Lo wanted to snap back at her, but she could only shiver. Micah’s hand was on her thigh, unbothered by the thought anyone could round the couch at any time and catch them. Not a single item of clothing shed, just Micah’s hand under her pencil skirt, rucking it up unbothered to the situation. She carried on as if it was the most normal thing in the world to have her legs tangled with Lo’s on a Wednesday afternoon.

“You know, if you really think about it,” Micah continued their earlier conversation, her soft voice never tripping even as Lo felt her own try to escape out her throat in a desperate sob. “The _Hymn to Aphrodite_ could just be _eros_ in its most physical expression of worship of Aphrodite.”

Lo didn’t need this, she didn’t need Micah explaining fucking Sappho while she pushed her underwear aside, not even trying to take them off. How could Micah be so controlled? So measured and calm? She had her hand parting Lo’s lips, slipping a knuckle up her slit to feel how turned on Lo was getting. Cyclical, the more unmoved Micah seemed, the more it frustrated Lo; choking on words she couldn’t say without getting them caught.

“Sappho is exalting Aphrodite because its more romantic to her to elevate her love of women to the divine. Her lover, who tortures her so, is her Aphrodite. Sappho’s lover holds that power over her, that pure _eros_ of sexual love and desire.” Micah explained, as if Lo wasn’t a Classics student.

Lo growled, trying to sit up, “Just because Sappho- oh fuck.”

A scarf, discarded on the coffee table was pressed into Lo’s mouth, “I’m sorry if you can’t form a proper academic rebuttal.”  
  


Lo wanted to yell how wrong Micah was, but at the same time, her thighs clenched around Micah’s wrist, and she could only muffle a pitiful moan into the scarf. How dare Micah use this as an opportunity to run her mouth about her false understanding of Greek writers! All of this, while Lo was unable to speak without shaking breaths.

If anyone was listening, between the pauses in Micah’s breaths, they could probably hear the slick sound of Micah slipping her fingers into Lo quickly; one, then two, in quick succession almost too easily. Lo felt a flush of embarrassment, cut off by her own desperate gasp, wet and wanting at Micah’s touch.

“Michael Ide once wrote that Sappho and Plato both deal in homoeroticism, Sappho’s expressing the physical and Plato the mental. The divine, and the philosophical; with both equal in level based on the way they themselves viewed the forms of love and their importance.” Micah smiled down at her congenially, “isn’t that fascinating?”  
  


_I’ll show you fascinating you bitch._ Lo thought before her thoughts jumbled, her clit screaming at her how sensitive it was, bucking suddenly into the slide of Micah’s thumb, barely touching her before pressing down in quick circles.

“In modern society, women are devoid of sexuality and men are seen as the creatures of lust, always on the search for their next source of satisfaction.”

Her fingers teased deeper, flicking out with each shudder it sparked in Lo. Lo knew if she put her own hand down from holding the scarf to her mouth, she’d be soaking. She already felt it down her thighs, around Micah’s fingers, she just wanted more before it wrecked her.

_“You came, and I was looking for you/and you cooled my breast aflame._ Ide argues this is an absence of morality in Sappho’s writing, its all physical for her. It’s all about physical fulfillment, but for Plato, it’s mental stimulation.”

Micah’s words always came out like a quiet assurance, but with the twinkle in her eyes, Lo could only hear teasing. The wicked fulfillment of her words wreaking havoc on Lo’s actual body, tensing under Micah’s fingers and desperate for respite. Micah’s knuckles disappeared inside her, thumb circling in a dissonant act from her speech. It was all Lo could do, lying there pinned, crying out in silence in frustration- mental and physical alike it seemed. So apropos.

Lo could only hold her breath as she came, stuttering against Micah’s hold, shaking as a flood of pleasure spread under a firm hand. She gulped down her cries, rocking into Micah’s hand with a staccato shudder, softening into smooth waves under her skin. It was fast, and warm, and overwhelming, and she was left feeling sleepy and sensitive.

Micah looked down at her, “I’m just saying it’s not much of an argument for essentialism when there is this wonderful grey area of understanding in both the poetry and the philosophy.”

“Oh fuck you.” Lo was finally able to gasp, her underwear askew with a spreading wet patch under her she won’t be able to move from unless she wants the whole library to know she came all over a damn sofa in public.

“Interesting.” Micah said mildly, putting her fingers up to her mouth, licking the taste of Lo off her fingers without breaking eye contact.

Lo opened her mouth for a moment before snapping it shut again. “I can’t, I just can’t.”

“You did.” Micah smiled, tongue between her fingers with a satisfied look.

Lo let the words hang in the air for a while, damp underwear between her thighs and her arms crossed over her still hard nipples.

“You’re still wrong about Plato.”

Micah just laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> Listen... I don't really care for original recipe Locah, but make them girls and sorry but I need to go take care of something... these girls are hot.


End file.
